.sarl is a GTLD that was proposed in ICANN's New gTLD Program. After a Private auction in June 2014, Donuts became the only applicant for the string. It was delegated to the Root Zone of the DNS on the 8th August 2014.[1] "Sarl" is short for Société à responsabilité limitée, a type of limited liability company.

Contents

Background

Successful Applicant

Donuts (Delta Orchard, LLC) - The applicant submitted a Public Interest Commitment, which can be downloaded here. Among the provisions in the PIC, Donuts states that it intends to keep registration open but that it will include an extra field in its Whois database to allow government entities to note whether the registrant has a legal corporate status.

Private Auction

In June 2014, the contention set was resolved via a private auction that Donuts won for an undisclosed amount. The other applicant withdrew their application following the result of the auction.[3]

GAC Early Warning

Both applicants received a number of GAC Early Warnings. The warning system is noted as a strong recommendation on behalf of national governments to the ICANN Board that a given TLD application should be denied as it stands. Applicants are encouraged to work with objecting GAC members.[4]

Donuts received warnings from: Cameroon, France, Mali, Luxembourg, Burkina Faso, and Benin. mySARL GmbH received warnings from France and Luxembourg. Many of the complaints were identical and all noted that SARLs are specifically regulated companies, especially in France, and must be restricted to actually verifiable SARLs or entities that can prove their SARL status is pending. The applications insinuated that current registration policies and enforcement mechanisms did not provide for this.[5]

Donuts replied to France´s warning to .sarl, and its similar objections for .health, .architect, .hotel, and .vin, with an impassioned defense of the validity of open registration for New gTLDs. In the case of .sarl it notes that there are other people and organizations that may use the SARL acronym, such as the South African Rugby League, other than those corporate entities that have their SARL title regulated by French law. It further notes that restricting registration unfairly assumes malfeasance on the part of the registrant, that no such restrictions exist for related domains in any exisiting gTLDs or ccTLDs, and that verification and restriction would inevitably raise the price of registration significantly. They go on to quote the GAC's own advice with regards to its contract with .xxx registry provider, ICM Registry, which notes that at that time the GAC was against any monitoring of TLD content given that it seems to overstep ICANN's technical mandate.[6] It similarily responded to the warnings from the African nations as well.[7]

Delegation and Availability

.sarl was delegated to the Root Zone of the DNS on the 8th August, 2014, completing the successful application for the string.[8]

Sunrise

The Registry announced that the Sunrise Period for the string would begin on the 2nd September 2014 and end on the 1st November 2014.[9]